The counter-punch: a review of Parallels Desktop 5

Version 5 of the popular Mac virtualization package, Parallels Desktop, has …

I like the minimalism of Crystal, but I found it odd that you are forced to interact with the Parallels Desktop app via the Parallels menuling—if you click on the Parallels Dock icon that you have bookmarked, it does nothing and there are no menu options for Parallels since it's hidden from the user. This wouldn't be a problem if configuring Parallels from the Crystal menu was a flawless procedure:

Trying to hide programs is a bit wonky, and you often see windows jumping in and out of the Dock, entirely missed mouse clicks, etc. In fact, it's worse than the video shows. My first attempt to use the Windows right-click menu had it appear at the bottom left of the screen. On another occasion it just broke itself:

Crystal and Coherence mode don't seem to like 3D apps in general. Switching from fullscreen to Coherence or Crystal mode either crashed Topogun (OpenGL) or would kill the DirectX preview in CrazyBump. Even when Crystal mode draws in the right place, it still has issues:

This is what happens if you left-click the Parallels menu after right-clicking it. Two menus covering each other.

And then there's this:

Note to developers: Redundant hot-help on menus are bad. Redundant hot-help that covers submenus are worse.

Crystal, in its current incarnation, has a lot of problems that will take a couple months to iron out. I like it, but I don't see it being different enough from Coherence mode to warrant the inclusion of both features. Since the Dock folder of Windows app aliases is still there in Coherence mode (bug?) and Coherence has the added option of enabling the Windows taskbar, why not just combine the two? I hate to be a cynic, but I can't see this as anything but a marketing department need for an “exclusive feature” bullet point. Users would be better served by being able to combine the two modes.